How One Arizona Lettuce Grower Uses Instagram to Make Farming Cool Again

@thefarmerjon is very effective at capturing beautiful low-light dusk and early morning imagery across his Yuma, AZ, farmscape. Since most farmers are up at the crack of dawn anyway, might as well get a little bonus brand marketing juice out of it as well, right?

Ag marketers have mostly bought in by now, but farmers have struggled for years now with a relatively simple decision: to Instagram, or not to Instagram?

An industry that embraced the other two major social networks (Facebook and Twitter) early on has mostly held the segment’s newest, glitteriest entries (SnapChat, Instagram, etc.) at arms’ length while pondering whether adding yet another social media platform to the “workload” is really worth it.

We all know farmers love data. They love sitting back in their easy chair and looking at it on a tablet, visualizing what it represents for their fields and operations, and they love when it helps make a once-tough management decision easier.

Additionally, 71% of all users of the platform are in that under-35 demographic that marketers are perpetually trying to reach. That’s in addition to the 35% of all active online adults – 28% of them U.S.-based, that also regularly check the site.

The Verdict: Clearly, if you’ve got the time, a compelling visual story to tell, and the right tools in which to tell that story, Instagram should probably be on your radar.

Insta Power User

A fourth-generation vegetable, hay, and grain farmer and the father of five, Dinsmore harvests iceberg lettuce, romaine lettuce, red and green mix lettuce, cauliflower, and broccoli, in a stunning agricultural valley that lends itself quite well to Instagram.

While most others are busy posting poolside selfies and images of their latest Instagram-able meal at the local farm-to-table restaurant (not judging, just saying), @thefarmerjon followers are more likely to happen across a shot of Dinsmore’s John Deere tractor getting repaired in the field, or even a post showing a sparkling irrigation ditch at sunset, explaining where Arizona’s desert-growing farmers get their water from. It’s a nice mix of equal parts education, entertainment, and good-old-fashioned farm family fun, in this author’s opinion.

So, if that sort of thing is up your alley, check out the gallery above for a few examples of some of John’s most-compelling, ag-focused Instagram posts. And go ahead and give him a follow if you’re on there.